Tag: Tyler Perry

The Army that still owns Fort McPherson and a state authority that wants to buy the fort, and flip most of it to filmmaker Tyler Perry, disagreed Friday in federal court over a critical point: When will the deal close?

The judge seemed to think the date important. A lawyer for the Army said: “No deal is currently imminent.”

The comments in U.S. District Court in Atlanta were the latest contortion in the proposed reuse of a military base whose decommissioning happened to occur at the end of the great recession. After eight years of digging a dry well in search of developers with money to invest, the state authority tasked with crafting a civilian use for the fort is caught between two film studios that see profits in a film industry burgeoning because of state tax incentives.

Tyler Perry’s proposal to buy most of Fort McPherson went by the code name “Coltrane” for at least a month before a tentative deal was announced last week.

“Coltrane” has clear expectations for the former base – including that “the wall” not be torn down, despite persistent requests from residents that the security wall be removed, according to minutes of meetings with the fort’s concerned neighbors.

There’s a discrepancy over the amount of land to be included in the deal. Either 449 acres is involved in the tentative deal, or 474 acres are involved. Both amounts have been cited in public.

The plan to sell most of Fort McPherson to filmmaker Tyler Perry has a long way to go, much of it behind closed doors, before the deal can close.

“We have a lot of details to get this to home base,” said Felker Ward, who chairs the state authority handling the deal.

The state authority has voted against a motion to update its plans for the fort’s civilian use and to keep the public involved in the process. Ward said these matters already are the authority’s job and the plan updates will be handled by Rick Padgett, who is a seasoned development consultant the authority hired Aug. 7 to help close the deal with the Army by Oct. 15.

State Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta) has asked the secretary of the Army to block the conversion of Fort McPherson into a movie studio, as proposed by filmmaker Tyler Perry.

Fort quickly pivoted to the political side of the debate over the fort’s reuse, after beginning his letter to the secretary with a recount of the public process that ended with the approval of a plan to build a mixed-use community on the grounds of the old fort.

To consider a studio now, without any public review, is, “the old ‘bait and switch’ that has been used for centuries to exclude people of color and the powerless from important economic decisions,” Fort wrote in his letter to Army Secretary John McHugh.